Winston House City of Richmond Department of Community Development

Built in 1873-74 for successful wholesale grocer Joseph P. Winston, this three-story house in downtown Richmond features one of the city’s most elaborate and unique cast-iron porches. The Joseph P. Winston House is one of the few remaining 19th-century residential buildings on Grace Street, which is now predominantly commercial. With its curved mansard roof and intricate iron porch and fence, the house stands as an isolated example of 19th-century building practices and styles used during the period of Reconstruction in the South following the Civil War. Constructed when prefabricated building components were gaining popularity, the home incorporates many mass-produced elements featured in builder catalogs of the time. These include the cornice, ironwork, and interior doors and moldings.

Winston’s home is significant architecturally and also as a document of the city’s changing residential trends. In the 1870’s, affluent professionals and merchants occupied its Grace Street neighborhood. Winston was a prosperous merchant who came to Richmond in 1850, most likely from Hanover County. He conducted a brisk wholesale grocery and commission business until his death 30 years later. His family occupied the house until 1895. The home had a succession of owners until the Joel family purchased it in 1929. The Joels founded the Richmond Art Company and constructed the building next door, which remains attached to the Joseph P. Winston House. Prominent Richmond architect Duncan Lee designed the Richmond Art Company building in 1920. Together, the two buildings illustrate a residential neighborhood that later turned largely commercial.